Newbie reloading questions 38 Spcl

[Bessiesboy]

Hi. I havent reloaded in years but used to reload for my .270. I am now going to do some .38 Special and have a few questions.
Do the cases have to be chamfered or will the flaring part of the press provide enough looseness in the neck to seat the new bullet?
Are handgun cases subject to the same lengthening as rifle cases? Will it be necessary to trim the length after each use?
Thanks
Bill

[dahermit]

Good question! Early (1960's and years later), Lyman hand loading manuals used illustrations of straight wall pistol cases being chamfered and listed it as a step in the hand loading process. Nevertheless, chamfering a straight wall pistol case is unnecessary and may actually be counter productive.

The flaring of case performed by the dies automatically during the loading process makes chamfering unnecessary. Furthermore, considering the that case failure in straight wall pistol cases usually starts as neck crack, thinning that area of the case makes no sense.

Note: De burring the case neck after trimming is not the same as chamfering and the function is not the same.

And no, straight wall hand gun cases do not lengthen as much as bottle neck cases, but they should be trimmed to the same length and checked periodically.

[Mike Irwin]

I could also see where chamfering a straight-walled pistol case could interfere with getting a good, solid crimp.

Not much of an issue on .38 Special, but it could be more of an issue with one of the hard kicking magnum rounds.

.38 Special is a dream to reload.

[Unclenick]

Case stretching requires the round operate at a pressure high enough to stick the brass to the chamber wall while the pressure forces the head to the rear. That stretches a rifle case at the pressure ring. In a low pressure case like the .38 Special, it doesn't happen. Pressure just backs the whole case up in the chamber instead. Loads that peak below around 30,000 psi tend to do this. while sticking and stretching tends to occur in loads running above about that level. There are other factors, but that's a sort of ballpark number to use.

I once tracked a batch of Winchester .45 ACP cases through 50 reloadings with a light target loads. Because the whole case backed up into the slightly tapered .45 ACP chamber, where pressure widened it, subsequent sizing actually flowed the brass back slightly. They lost and average of half a thousandth in length with each load cycle, and were 0.025" short when I retired the last of them.

[Poodleshooter]

.38 Special is probably the easiest cartridge that I reload for.
-No lube required to size it.
-No trimming to do
-No chamfering/deburring/case neck prep
-I don't even clean primer pockets for it
-It has a good sized bullet,so handling bullets and seating them is easy (beats handling itty bitty .20 or .17 bullets!)
-I can even load unsized lead bullets for it,something I can't do with cases that headspace on the mouth.

[carguychris]

+1. Poodleshooter, but I'd add:

-Lots of empty case volume makes it very forgiving
-Abundant load selection, almost any fast pistol powder will work reasonably well for almost any bullet
-Low peak pressure + absence of forceful semi-auto mechanical extraction (usually) = minimal damage to brass during firing and extraction = cases can be reused almost indefinitely

In reference to the original post...

No, Yes. No. No.

[briandg]

a couple of downsides to the .38:

First, the walls generally seem a little thinner, and split a lot more easily than other brass. roll crimping makes it worse.

That huge case makes it hard to spot an over charge. If you load a really dense powder, with small loads, a double charge is very easily missed in case inspection.

I really agree that the .38 special is probably the dead simplest load. You can even stuff it full of black powder and it will still fire effectively.

[Bessiesboy]

Thank you all for your informative comments
Bill